Day 2 — The Diverge Phase
Overall, Monday was a success. We reached common understanding and developed empathy for our ideal user: Francisco Flores.
The day started a bit slow compared to Monday. The main reason behind this is that we are still working on the finishing details of our website, on selling consulting services and on finishing details for a customer.
Day 2: Explore Alternatives
Day 2’s main goal is to come up with as many alternatives as possible. It is in this day when you let the creative juices flow. You do market research, competitor analysis and collect inspiration.
We think a new product does not need to reinvent the wheel. Great products are made up of applying the wheel in a different way. Connecting two wheels on an axis lead to the invention of the chariot.
Great products come from an abundance of ideas. It was Antoine de Saint Exupery who said: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing else to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” I agree with him, but it is better if you have a lot of things to take away.
A couple of days ago, I saw a Ted talk that said Mozart and Beethoven have so many master pieces because they wrote a lot of pieces. The same applies to product design.
Our Planned Activities:
Refresh:
Our first activity was going over Monday’s work. We reviewed our Sprint Goals, Our Problem Statement and Product Vision.
2x2
We used a 2x2 matrix to focus our creativity. We selected the variables: Number of Active Interaction, versus Expertise of the reviewer. This painted the picture of our competitors and guided our future efforts.
UX Matrix
Most sprints we have borrowed from, have a lightning demo step. We however, think a little bit of structure can help more meaningful interactions without limiting the creative potential. A side benefit of structure is the availability of documentation.
UX Matrix is a matrix created by Jaime Levy Russel. The matrix is explained with detail in her book: UX Strategy, How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want. Jaime Levy shares an ideology with Jake Knapp and other Design Sprint authors.
Test fast, Prototype Fast & Validate Soon.
Jaime Levy’s approach is a bit less free-form. You do an analysis on a series variables like: Market Size, Competitor Size, Community Size & Quality, Functionality, and personalization. These information helps us understand the minimum user jobs acceptable for a customer.
Lightning Demos
With the UX Matrix research, everyone is able to check facts on the solutions that were going to be presented. Lightning demos were focused exclusively on showing specific interaction elements and functionality we enjoyed.
The team drew the elements we liked on post it notes and placed them on a wall. Without any specific criteria. We simply needed a place to keep them.
Lunch:
We had McDonald’s for lunch. Please don’t judge us. We over-extended our lunch from an hour to two hours. We needed to send a couple of proposals and to fix some code. This broke our inertia a bit, but we were able to get back on track.
Four Step Sketch
We had originally intended to include a forced relationship exercise. Forced relationships are when you list a series of characteristics and try to connect them with your service. This is a technique that helps your creative-self warm up for the following techniques.
E.g. Apples are red, rich in fiber and help you poop, Our service should help you dump useless files. The service display red signals when you get rid of old documents. This is a fast example but it helps you get creative. Sometimes a crazy idea is useful.
Take Notes:
We did an overview of our UI Post its from the lightning demo. We asked each other questions like: “What do you mean by ‘Bounty’?”, “ Is this Stack Overflow’s user profile?”. We also explained what we remembered.
Crazy 8's
We did 2 rounds of Crazy 8’s because the technique is hard the first time around. Also, I consider that the first Crazy 8’s are not as creative as things you come up with when you are desperate about filling the last canvas.
Solution Sketch
Solution Sketches are a group of 3 windows in which you explain/design a process that you think solves the problem. This drawings have an explanation on the side that helps everyone understand what the creator meant when they drew the interaction. (We did two rounds because we are running the Sprint as a team of 4)
Go Home
We kept the sketches a secret. No one has seen them since we finished the session. Tomorrow morning, they will be available for display and review.
What Went Right
We came up with a fair amount of ideas. (About 120). The team is motivated to see the outcome. We are all open to the ideas and excited about sharing what we worked on today.
What Went Wrong
We took too long to eat lunch. In an ideal world, we would’ve been able to dedicate our whole attention to the design sprint, but sometimes life gets in the way.
Note to Self: Improve the Solution Sketch by having print outs. We need to do this because Large Post It notes are unavailable in our area.
What do you guys think? Tomorrow we will share our Final Story Board. We are really excited about where this is going.
Comment below to share your experience.
